Earth's Mini-Moons

Date: 
Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - 17:30
Location: 
AURA Lecture Hall
Speaker: 
Robert Jedicke, Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii
Talk Abstract: 
Everyone knows that the Earth has one natural satellite - the Moon; but they are wrong.  We show that the Earth has many small natural satellites captured from the near-Earth object population of asteroids and comets and that at any time there is another natural object as big as one-meter diameter in orbit around the Earth in addition to the Moon.